Looking to homeschool, but intimidated by the potential of legal oversight by government bureaucrats? This chapter explains to what extent, and in what ways, the government involves itself in homeschooling, including a rundown of the some states and their varying levels of regulation.

Find out what interaction will be required with local school officials,
if any

Notify your state that you are homeschooling, if required

Document all the legal activity specifically related to your
homeschool

Be aware of legislative and legal activity occurring that might have an
impact on your homeschool

For sometimes better and oftentimes worse, government is involved in many of
the activities we choose to undertake. Homeschooling is no exception to this
statement. One of the first tasks you need to do after you have decided to
homeschool your children is to find out to what extent your state and local
governments are going to be involved in the operation of your homeschool. The
level of involvement of these governments is determined by the regulations they
have established regarding education, and more specifically, regulations related
to the alternatives to public schools.

What Has Your State Government or Local School System Got to Do with
Homeschool?

Although the general requirements regarding education are laid out at the
federal level, public education is mostly the responsibility of state and local
governments. Because of this, federal education regulations won't have any
impact on your homeschool.

CAUTION

Public education policies are drastically different in different countries.
Because I live in the United States, the information in this chapter is directed
toward its education regulatory system. If you live in a different country, you
will need to investigate the regulations and policies that your country
enforces. This chapter will provide some general guidelines for you, but you
will have to find specific information for your country and region.

However, any state or local government regulations that govern the area in
which you live definitely do have an impact on your homeschool. Failure to
comply with such regulations can result in less severe consequences to you, such
as warnings or fines, to extremely severe consequences, such as you being unable
to homeschool your kids or having child protection agencies investigate or
interfere with your family. You should carefully consider and comply with
regulations that govern your homeschool.

There are two areas of regulation that you need to consider: state and local
guidelines.

Your state certainly has regulations that govern the operation of its public
education system. It probably also has regulations that relate to
"alternative" or "alternate" schools. These regulations are
generally related to private schools, such as schools run by religious
organizations. In most cases, these "alternate" regulations are the
ones that govern homeschools. No matter which state you live in, you need to
understand your state's education regulations that impact your homeschool.
The good news is that it is relatively easy to determine your state's
regulations. You'll learn how to do this in the next section.

NOTE

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal
education positively fortifies it.
Stephen Vizinczey

NOTE

As homeschooling continues to explode in popularity, it will be interesting
to see if states will start creating more regulations about homeschools.
Hopefully not, because more regulation can only make homeschooling more
difficult, but that remains to be seen.

Public schools are actually run by local governments at the city or county
level. In some cases, these local governments also will have regulations about
alternate schools, again with most of this regulation being directed toward
private schools. In many cases, as long as you meet your state's
regulations, you will also meet your local government's requirements. In
reality, many of the specific regulations that are part of a state's
education requirements are administered at the local school level. For example,
some state governments require that the public school system have oversight over
homeschoolers in their jurisdiction, such as submitting the results of
standardized tests to the local school authorities. In the worst case, the local
school overseers might attempt to dictate the curricula your homeschool uses,
but that is very unlikely. In other cases, you might have to submit to some sort
of supervision of your homeschool. Even in these more difficult circumstances,
it is still possible to have a good homeschool experience. Dealing with your
local school officials is explored in detail a bit later in this chapter.

Vouchers or Tax Credits for Homeschoolers

One area in which government could be a great help to homeschoolers is by the
creation of vouchers or tax credits for homeschoolers. As a homeschooler, you
are responsible for all the costs associated with educating your children. And,
assuming you pay the taxes that support public education in your area, you also
"pay" for public education services that you don't use.

Over the past several years, the concept of vouchers has been attempted in
several areas. Basically, the idea of a voucher is that parents can choose to
use the voucher to pay for a private education for their children instead of
sending them to public school. The basic concept is to promote the improvement
of public education by increasing the level of competition with private schools.
(The idea is to provide vouchers to people who normally can't afford to
both pay both taxes and to send their kids to private schools. These vouchers
can be used to pay tuitionthe schools to which the vouchers are submitted
get reimbursed by the government.) Vouchers tend to be very controversial
because they threaten the public education system's monopoly and all that
that monopoly engenders.

Although vouchers aren't currently being contemplated for homeschoolers,
they are still an important topic for us as well. That's because any effort
to loosen the grip that government has over the mandatory direction of tax
dollars to public education services that we don't use will eventually be
beneficial to us as well. For example, it is conceivable that someday, should
vouchers become an accepted tool, we might get vouchers for materials we use in
our homeschools (we could transfer some of the tax dollars we spend on public
education toward the costs of educating our kids at home).

A more realistic goal is to obtain tax credits for homeschooling. This idea
has some precedent already in the childcare tax credit system that is currently
in place. If you pay for childcare outside of your home, you can get tax credits
for doing so. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that those of us who take
the responsibility of our children's education should somehow be able to
recover some portion of our taxes that we pay to support public education. A tax
credit system would enable us to do so. As a homeschooler, you need to be aware
of such issues in your area and support those that would benefit you.